education

Over the weekend the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local 3902 held a referendum ratification vote to allow its members to democratically vote in favour or against the second tentative agreement that was negotiated on March 18. The results came in on Sunday night and have indicated the membership's choice of not ratifying the agreement.

The Administration was quick to respond in emphasizing their disappointment with CUPE3902 members in having rejected the "generous" deal. Yet the administration did not shed light on the actual reasons that have driven down the tentative agreement:

Related rabble.ca story:

Parents and teachers were in a state of shock this week after the B.C. Liberals announced yet more cuts and expense increases for B.C.'s beleaguered school districts. Teachers were on the picket line for five weeks last summer with parent support to try to address the funding crisis in B.C. schools. B.C. students currently receive about $1000 less per student than the Canadian average. This in a province with a budget surplus.

Anyone who spends time with children or teens knows that they sometimes say the most profound things, perhaps without actually meaning to. It's as though their eyes can see the world in ways no longer possible for those of us who have fully conformed to conventional ways of thinking, those of us who no longer see the ordinary magic that surrounds us.

Each year I am reminded of this ordinary magic when I take my students on a three-day camping field trip. Even though it's the most exhausting and stressful thing I do - imagine being responsible for 30 teens for 72 hours - I know that their experiences at camp will be what they remember for the rest of their lives. They come back to school each year to tell me so.

The malfunction at the Tri-County (Digby-Yarmouth-Shelburne) regional school board revealed by the auditor general is not just a bump in the road, nor is it just about education.

As the most recent of a string of similarly misfiring school boards, it's close to the heart of the general malaise in public administration that's been rising for a generation in this province and which governments, knee-deep in small politics, struggle fitfully and sometimes counterproductively to manage.

In fact, the McNeil government would have done better to have tackled the school boards than the health boards, the radical centralizing of which may or may not advance anything.